Poll on Alpha Price

[David29]

People are confusing "pre-ordering the game and receiving the privilege of being able to test the Alpha" with "paying to test the Alpha". You aren't paying to test the Alpha - you are receiving early access to the game so that you can provide feedback and influence the development of the game. What I find ironic is that people complain when devs don't acknowledge the players and their views and opinions.

[Mas Tnega]

You say that, but you're still paying for a thing that has no particular reason to cost $30.

[crummett]

You say that, but you're still paying for a thing that has no particular reason to cost $30.

your paying to help the game exist in a playable form. You want to play so you contribute in order to play. easy

[Lyx]

Quick comment about those people who are on the "feedback is valueable, one shouldn't have to pay, and actually ANYONE should be able to give feedback"-wagon:

You're forgetting something - regardless of if the group of those who can give feedback is "closed" or "open", a lot of feedback is sub-par quality, and it takes effort and energy (DEV-TIME!) to process feedback.

So, feedback always has a cost for the developers (processing).... feedback becomes useful and valueable, when the benefit of the feedback weights higher than the cost of processing it.

In theory, the ideal feedback-group would be closed and magically only consist of people giving at minimum average quality feedback.

Of course, this "magic" doesn't exist in practice. In practice, you don't know ahead of time, if some stranger will be a good alpha-tester. So you're in a dilemma: If you give more people access to the tester-team, you may get more useful testers, or not.... but the effort of processing feedback also will go up.

The "paid"-thingie is a double-edged sword.... ignoring business consideration, it DOES tend to reduce people who just want to play for free, and not return anything..... it however - as others mentioned - will also exclude some possible useful testers, who just do not want, or are not able, to pay.

At this point, i semi-agree with what someone else said earlier: IV should give anyone who in the past proved to be useful testers, free access. Seriously, if quality feedback is your concern, then nothing is more efficient than people of whom you KNOW ALREADY that they'll be useful. Those kinds of people actually are WORTH MONEY... letting them provide useful feedback for free, would actually be like asking them a favour, not "being nice to them".

[Mas Tnega]

You say that, but you're still paying for a thing that has no particular reason to cost $30.

your paying to help the game exist in a playable form. You want to play so you contribute in order to play. easy

You say that, but you're still paying for a thing that has no particular reason to cost $30.

[David29]

You say that, but you're still paying for a thing that has no particular reason to cost $30.

You're basing that that on what, exactly?

Also, are you talking about in relation to the finished product or how it stands currently? If you mean the former, then I disagree - I have paid more than £20/$30 for games which have been less fun to play. If you mean the latter, then your argument is very flawed as the price is representative of a pre-order for a final game - not that of an Alpha.